


Totentanz: The Night Session

by elDiablito



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: F/M, Nudity, some gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-14
Updated: 2013-06-14
Packaged: 2017-12-14 22:22:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/842031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elDiablito/pseuds/elDiablito
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abigail escapes the hospital in the middle of the night to seek comfort from Hannibal Lecter after a nightmare.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Totentanz: The Night Session

            Her fingertips travelled over the velvet contours of the sofa, dipping between the hills of the Tiffany-blue upholstery to circle the buttons before making the trek up the next slope. Stifled by the silence of Dr. Lecter’s office, Abigail Hobbs looked around at the conservative finery, the dark woods and jewel-toned fabrics, the ornately framed pieces of art, the oriental rug at the center of the room beneath the chaise lounge—almost absurdly typical for a psychiatrist. The trailing curtains were drawn against the darkness outside, and in the illumination of the singular lamp on Hannibal’s desk, the office, usually bright and open, felt closed in, sinister. She wondered when the doctor would return to find her in his office, unannounced in the middle of the night.

            Footsteps from the hall sent her heart hammering, and her back straightened to the rigid posture of a child anticipating punishment. When the door opened and Hannibal entered, her hands flew to her lap and folded, nails biting damp, pale palms.

            In the doorway, he paused, appearing as he did when visiting her at the hospital: three piece suit of dark purple neatly pressed, his hair slicked back save for a single strand above his forehead that must have become unsettled after a long day, his angular face serene but for a punctuation of confusion that formed between his brows upon seeing her.

            “Miss Hobbs,” he said, the bold lines of his lips curling downward at the edges. “I was not expecting you.”

            Too polite to turn her away, the doctor walked to his desk to straighten papers in a pointedly unnecessary way, willing her without words to explain herself for another of her increasingly frequent late-night visits.

            “I…” she began, but her mouth hung open, throat mute. She closed her lips, swallowed, eyes focused on the whirls she had formed in the velvet sofa, aware of Hannibal watching her every twitch and breath. “I had a nightmare.”

            When she looked up at him, he was leaning back in his desk chair, one ankle propped up on the opposite knee, hands folded in his lap as if in mockery of her own tense posture—he sat relaxed and confident in his natural habit while Abigail floundered for speech and curled beneath the weight of Dr. Lecter’s gaze. Heat blossomed red across her chest and into her freckled cheeks.

            “I see,” he said, tone ambiguous. “What was this nightmare about?”

            Abigail’s shoulder’s lifted then fell, her eyelashes fluttered like crow-feathers, dark and distressed as she looked around the shadowed office. “It started out as they all do,” she finally began. “I’m in the kitchen, and my father has the blade of the knife pressed to my throat, and I know then I’m about to die. But…” Here she paused, glanced up at Hannibal for a fraction of a second, and fell silent.

            “Abigail,” Hannibal insisted, dropping his leg to lean forward in his desk chair, his eyes reaching out to her across the distance between them. Abigail looked toward him but could not meet those without her empty stomach clenching like a fist around a stress ball.

            He said, “You came all this way from the hospital in the middle of the night to tell me, yes?” Abigail nodded, and with barely concealed exasperation, Hannibal licked his lower lip and straightened to sit back into his chair again. He held a hand out as if to draw her forward. “Then please, dear. Continue. I desire only to help if I am able.”

            His sincerity loosened Abigail’s jaw, the warmth of his tone inciting a string of sensory memories of his hug after she revealed her dark secret of assisting in her father’s serial killings. Hannibal’s hand, broad and gentle, had stroked her hair as he murmured words meant to assuage her ragged nerves and quiet her sobs. When she looked at him now, sitting miles away at his desk within the halo of light from his lamp, she yearned once more for that tender embrace.

            “But then the knife pulled away from my throat,” she continued where she had left off, her head tilted up to raise her chin in a gesture of courage. “The tip of the knife dragged over my chest, and I remember feeling it cold on my skin as it drew blood.” Another pause. “I wasn’t scared.”

            “And why weren’t you afraid, Abigail?” Hannibal asked, tilting his head to the side as he observed her in this state of tumult.

            “I don’t know. But at that moment I knew my father wasn’t holding me. I pulled away and turned to look behind me and I saw—“ she cut off, locking eyes with the doctor.

            Shaded eyes narrowing almost imperceptibly, Hannibal pressed her to finish though he knew fully well what words would follow: “What did you see?”

            “It was you,” Abigail said. “You were holding the knife, and I wasn’t afraid.”  

            Hannibal sniffed and smoothed down his waistcoat, breaking eye contact with the girl for an instant to sever the tension. He didn’t enjoy the way she looked at him so earnestly, her cheeks flushed and inviting; it made him want to cross lines inappropriate for their relationship and unsuited to his purposes in protecting her. Devouring her was not an option no matter how obliviously the doe-eyed girl whetted his appetite.

            “But you said this was a nightmare,” Dr. Lecter stated. “I am happy that even in your subconscious I could provide some comfort, but this does not explain why you are here.”

            “It’s stupid,” Abigail said abruptly, standing as if to retreat through the door, but she began pacing in tight lines in front of the sofa.

            Hannibal shook his head. “If it was important enough to bring you here, then I am certain that is not the case. Please, Abigail.”

            He held out a hand once more, and this time it seemed with the intent to bring her physically closer. She halted in her pacing and evaluated the hand, tanned, veined. Eyes on the proffered hand, she toed forward, her boots clicking in the quiet.         Looking up at her, Dr. Lecter smiled with patient, closed-lipped sweetness, and Abigail took his hand in hers. She stood that way, connected to Hannibal, for a time before breathing in his cologne through her nose. The scent reminded her that—despite his insistence that Will Graham and he were her new fathers now—Hannibal was not her father. He had no trace of grease on him from working with metal and machinery, no lingering stench of hard-earned sweat or the musk of deer fur and pine wafting from his jacket.

            Hannibal embodied high society, stability, sanctuary while her father had been dirty, deranged, had left her broken in ways she was unsure she could repair even with the help of the doctor. A part of her continued to love her father even after his attempt to kill her, and in terror of this fact, Abigail sought to stamp out the ember of Garrett Jacob Hobbs with Hannibal’s touch.

            Abigail removed her hand from the doctor’s, fingers flying to the scarf encircling her throat that served more to disguise her scar than to function for warmth. Her hands trembled perceptibly as she loosened the printed fabric, and as her heart accelerated, she felt as if she were removing a noose. Discarding the scarf, she began to unbutton her peacoat, the burgundy one Dr. Bloom had been kind enough to purchase for her. While before she would feel the silky lining and bury her hands within the pockets with pride of her appearance, she struggled to remove the restricting article fast enough.

            As the girl undressed in front of him, Hannibal sat poised on the edge of his seat, his features frozen into a subtle grimace of confusion and anxiety. He considered ordering her to stop, to grab her by the wrists and chastise her, send her out into the night to leave him in peace, but curiosity killed his reason. In lieu of stopping Abigail, the doctor waited for her to finish this spectacle of impropriety. Boots were kicked off without ceremony. Her feminine fingers fumbled with her blouse buttons before throwing off the shirt and revealing her youthful torso. Next came her jeans that were removed with less difficulty as she undid the button, allowed the pants to fall to her ankles, and stepped out in her socks and underwear.

            “It was a nightmare,” Abigail croaked, and her hands moved to her back to unfasten the clasp on her white bra. Sliding the straps off her shoulders, she dropped this article as well, and stood with bared chest rising and falling out of rhythm as Hannibal looked from her naked body up into her face.

            “Suddenly, I was naked, and you asked me to lay down on the dining table,” the girl said, her voice wavering like music on warped vinyl while her eyes never strayed from Hannibal’s face. “And so I did.”

            She stepped closer, within the circle of light, so that Hannibal had to tilt his head back to look into her face. Her dark hair casted fine shadows on her skin as she swallowed hard and lifted a hand to point a painted nail at the bottom of her sternum.

            “You cut me open,” she said. “You took a knife from here—” her finger trailed down her smooth stomach “—to here.”  Finger pausing at her navel, Abigail looked down at her vulnerable body, remembering the gore of the dream, the black blood that had oozed from her core like tar to cover the dining table in her old home, the place where she and her family had shared meals of human meat.

            In the dream, Hannibal had held her, stroked her face and body with such love and appreciation that she recalled no struggle as he took a blade to her, renting her open like a felled deer, butchering her in her own home. She could only recall watching his face, so concentrated and calm as he worked, a strand of hair falling from its placement in defiance of the care to put it there. Her hand had risen to meet the lock of hair, to push it back into place, to fix. Blood spewed from somewhere in her belly, dappling her arm like a Jackson Pollock painting as her palm rested against his sharp cheekbone. She had woken up sweating, sex aching, mouth dry.

             A heat stung beneath her eyelids, and unbidden, a fat tear rolled from the corner of one eye down her nose, falling to the rug beneath her socks. She squeezed her eyes tight, wanting to be brave and mature and beautiful for Hannibal, not weak.

            Warm fingers on her belly made her eyes open, widen. Looking down, Abigail found the doctor’s hand pressed to her stomach, palm over the curve of her lower abdomen, just above the lace trim of her underwear, fingers splayed over her diaphragm. Her lips opened as she registered the touch, their proximity, the danger and thrill of the situation.

            “Abigail,” he murmured, and her eyes hesitated to turn up to meet his. What she found freed her stomach to drop through the floor like the seats of an amusement park ride, complete free-fall: no smile softened his red lips, no lamplight livened his eyes. He had the face of a killer, a predator with his prey caught beneath his paw.

            “You did not come to me for consolation,” he said. “You came here for fulfillment of the dream.”

            Open lips trembling, a deluge of tears sprung forth and blurred her vision. Hannibal’s fingers moved and curled against her skin, drawing a heat from the center of her body to pool between her thighs. She felt like a planet erupting, cracking open in every direction, so terrified and hungry and alive that speech failed her because no words her mind could assemble adequately conveyed both “Don’t touch me” and “Touch me more.”

            So Abigail settled for a whispered, “Are you going to kill me?”

            The hand fell still. The doctor’s fingertips paused at the sharp curve of her hipbone and a constellation of faint freckles. Pursing his lips—the most expressive his face had been since the revelation of Abigail’s dream—he moved his hand to circle around her waist, thumb massaging a small circle on her stomach.

            Cocking his head to the side and looking up at the poor, shaking girl, Hannibal Lecter shook his head and said, “No, my dear. I am not.”

            A sob broke loose from her, and her hand clamped over her mouth before more unwanted sounds could escape. As her shoulders shook, and she bit her lower lip to keep from weeping and embarrassing herself further, Hannibal stood from his chair. Now looming over her, the doctor placed his hands on Abigail’s narrow, bare shoulders and sighed.

            “Abigail,” he said. “Shush. There, there.” His hands rubbed up and down on her arms, easing the tension that bound her. She looked up, eyes sparkling like polished jewels and lashes glistening wet. Her lower lip had split beneath her teeth, and blood reddened it like rouge. Hannibal offered a grin then bent down to kiss her on the mouth, and in his hands she froze as if caught in headlights on a highway. She registered heat, moisture, the slick texture of a tongue, and then he was gone. When he pulled away, he tasted her blood and discreetly licked his lips before placing a chaste peck on the center of her forehead like a blessing.

            Dropping his hands from her shoulders, he smoothed back a strand of hair from her face, tucking it behind her ear.

            “Get dressed, my dear. It’s late.”

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I know. I'm a total cock-blocker.  
> But thank you for reading my first crack at Hannibal fan fiction. Hopefully there will be more to come~ Feel free to tell me what you think or if you have ideas for other stories. I would love to hear your opinions. c:


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